Decades of Reconstruction

Postwar Societies, State-Building, and International Relations from the Seven Years' War to the Cold War

Ute Planert, James Retallack

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781107165748
• eBook ISBN:
  9781316730997
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

As wars and other conflicts increase on a worldwide scale, the alleged 'new wars' of the present day have taught that military victory does not necessarily result in a sustained state of peace. Rather, societies in conflict experience a 'status mixtus' - a transformative period that includes substantial changes in economy, politics, society and culture. Focusing on these decades of reconstruction in Europe and North America, this book examines the transformation of state systems, international relations, and normative principles in international comparison. By putting the postwar decade after 1945 into a long-term historical perspective, the chapters illuminate new patterns of transition between war and peace from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Experts in the field show that states and societies are never restituted from a 'zero hour'. They also demonstrate that foreign and domestic policy are intermixed before and after peace breaks out.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Neither War Nor Postwar: Decades of Reconstruction
• Part I A World in Upheaval: From the Seven Years’ War to the Age of Metternich
• Part II Between Reich and State: The Germanies, 1648–1830
• Part III Civil and Uncivil Wars: The 1860s and 1870s
• Part IV Central Europe and Its Borderlands in the Twentieth Century
• Part V A New International Order After Total War?
• Part VI Prospects
• Index